This release is something we have been working towards for a while now. We are true believers in the SaaS ethos of incremental improvements and releasing frequently; therefore, this large release is atypical for us. So why does this release differ?
When Zesty.io started out 10 years ago it was initially designed with the purpose of making building websites easier. While that is still a core part of the product, we have grown with the scope and sophistication of our customers. As such, our feature sets and ambitions have grown as well. The Zesty.io platform now acts as a true Content-as-a-Service (CaaS) by providing a hybrid headless CMS, allowing for the agnostic delivery of content.
One of the major blockers in achieving this was the technical debt we accumulated over the years. While there is much to be written about Zesty.io's historical technology (there are some great stories in there), we will save that for another day. Suffice to say the core application code has shifted from an in house solution to a React + Redux technology stack. This is important for a few key reasons:
Longevity. Choosing open source, production-tested solutions with a large community means we can be confident of on-going development.
Speed. By using well known libraries we can build a team with experience in these technologies and make changes to the product at a quicker pace.
Scale. For us, meaning: structure as the lines of code for the product increases, baseline performance on rendering, and allowing more opportunity for contribution with a known and approachable technology.
Availability. Manager front-end code is now publicly accessible on Github.
Expansion. Our app-shell architecture is primed for future 3rd party application development.
We will have more to share on our future vision for the product and stories of the process to get here, but for now learn more about the features and fixes with this release or take it for a spin.
What about the legacy experience?
With any release we want it to be as seamless and painless as possible for our customers. For this reason the legacy experience will still be accessible.
All of the primary links to the Content Manager will now direct to the new experience. A new "Legacy Manager" link is now available on the accounts instance overview.
As well as a link within Content Manager to quickly jump back to the legacy experience.
The legacy experience will be available for a few months before it is officially retired. With this in mind, if you run into behavior that's counter to what you expect we want to hear from you! Please reach out via our Slack channel (Join via chat.zesty.io) or email us at support@zesty.io.
By Stuart Runyan
Developing web technologies is my passion! I'm focused on creating applications and experiences to solve the problems which today's digital marketers face. I believe in web standards, a mobile first approach, access for everyone, open source software and the democratization of information. My goal is to continue the Internet being pure awesome!